Mary Caffrey

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic presents a new challenge: patients have severe flu-like symptoms, but the virus can also cause renal failure. Doctors and patients need analgesics that go easy on the liver and kidneys but are not addictive, and this week researchers at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence announced they have discovered a new class of drugs that can do the job.

Polygenic risk scores, which evaluate disease risk based on DNA variants, have previously been based almost entirely on patients who had European ancestry.

Companion diagnostic testing identifies patients most likely to benefit from biomarker-driven treatments. Much of the promise in lung cancer treatment comes from use of testing to match patients with targeted therapies, checkpoint inhibitors, or combinations.

JNCCN is the official journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a group of cancer centers that develops treatment guidelines that are considered the “gold standard” for payers.

End-stage renal disease has long been one of the most expensive and debilitating conditions that affects Medicare beneficiaries. Not only does dialysis cost $90,000 a year—those awaiting a kidney transplant automatically qualify for Medicare—but the need to travel to a dialysis center multiple times a week disrupts employment and home life.

Results from the University of New South Wales appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The co-lead investigator said the results show the need for more treatment options in chronic kidney disease.

The decision comes almost exactly a month after results from KEYNOTE-177 were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

The savings occurred even while more patients in the health system were enrolling in clinical trials, according to an abstract presented during the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Virtual meeting.

A coauthor of the study said that if the noninvasive test was used more widely, before kidney cancers have spread, fewer people would die from the disease.

Acute kidney injury is a sudden onset of kidney damage that causes waste products to build up in the body. These episodes have become more common during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, causing kidney failure in some previously healthy patients who had no prior history of renal problems.

In a poster titled “Basal Insulins in Advanced Renal Failure: Time for a Paradigm Shift,” authors compared the safety and efficacy of insulin degludec (Tresiba) with insulin glargine 100U (Lantus) among patients with stage 3 and stage 4 chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Two studies evaluated how well the dual inhibitor reduced glycated hemoglobin (A1C) while measuring instances of hypoglycemia and other safety measures.

Administrator Seema Verma said the proposal would create opportunities "for drug manufacturers to have skin in the game through payment arrangements that challenge them to put their money where their mouth is."

Bold Goal is Humana’s effort to address holistic health needs in key markets, in part by working with community partners to address social determinants of health. The program seeks to tackle barriers such as lack of food or housing and social isolation that contribute to chronic disease.

Coverage from the Community Oncology Alliance Virtual Meeting, held April 23-24, 2020.

The light-hearted debate, “Primary Cardiovascular Prevention with SGLT2 Inhibitors or GLP-1 Receptor Agonists: Are We Ready for Prime Time?” took place Monday during the 80th American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions.

A finding that ertugliflozin produced a 30% drop in heart failure hospitalization risk fell outside the study’s primary and secondary end points; here, the drug performed within range of its class, the sodium glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors.

Selected abstracts from the American Diabetes Association's 80th Scientific Sessions discuss when to add injectable therapy, how patients who switched to semaglutide lost more weight and gained glycemic control, and offered results from an early-phase study on a monoclonal antibody that may preserve B-cell function.

During a joint symposium on Saturday, held as part of the 80th American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions and hosted by JDRF President and CEO Aaron Kowalski, PhD, experts debated the merits and pitfalls of how to measure glycemic control and overall health among persons with diabetes. Which is better, they asked: the traditional measure of glycated hemoglobin or the newer measure, time-in-range?

Yale's Silvio Inzucchi, MD, who has been involved in groundbreaking trials with SGLT2 inhibitors for the past decade, shared data that show patients who did not have type 2 diabetes (T2D) when they started the DAPA-HF trial were 32% less likely to develop the disease if they took dapagliflozin (Farxiga) instead of placebo.

When it comes to diabetes, lead study author Deepak L. Bhatt, MD, MPH, said clinicians and payers should weigh the considerable costs of what happens when a patient suffers a heart attack or stroke when deciding on a treatment regimen.

Researchers warned that financial incentives that focus on a percentage of pathway compliance could “paradoxically harm the quality of care."

Experiments with the protein Cx43 show that it could be a "druggable target" to prevent renal decline.

Recently, cardiorenal outcomes have gained attention, as SGLT2 inhibitors in particular have been shown to prevent renal decline and reduce the risk of patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) progressing to kidney failure

In his prior role at CareMore Health, Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, launched a Togetherness initiative to address isolation that leads to health problems among seniors.

Patients who have no history of kidney damage are ending up with acute kidney injury, which could leave them at higher risk of chronic kidney disease and dialysis.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced the update today in a blog post in Health Affairs.

Getting the full picture of genetic testing results requires that patients have access to genetic counselors who can evaluate individual risk.

A picture is emerging picture of what patients with cancer face under coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): They are more likely to be older or have underlying health problems, which are known to make the virus more deadly. But the treatments that can stop cancer could also put that at risk.

Debra A. Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, a breast cancer specialist at Texas Oncology is the lead author on the study being presented at ASCO.